


the things we take off for each other

by bloodsweatspit



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Multi, because lachlan’s in it lmao, cw food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:55:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27576842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsweatspit/pseuds/bloodsweatspit
Summary: intimacy means being vulnerable.a moist talkers story.
Relationships: Alston Cerveza/Cedric Spliff, Eugenia Garbage/Ziwa Mueller
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17
Collections: Canada Moist Talkers Fanfiction





	the things we take off for each other

lachlan and mcblase have been friendly since her first day in halifax, when anyone who knew the word “blaseball” for miles around was absolutely losing their shit, and he made sure that she & quack got something to eat after the game. lachlan isn’t great at a lot of things, emotionally speaking, but feeding people can do a lot of the work for him. he doesn’t remember what he made quack - probably something simple, maybe a salad of sea greens & extra worms he’d kept on hand for richmond - but he remembers what mcblase asked him to make. he liked that about her. that she knew what she wanted and showed no qualms about asking for it.

in the course of offering dinner, he’d mentioned that he was the “good cook” of the team; she raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow in response. “oh? how’s your carbonara?”

he grinned. “well, closest i’ve got to guanciale in the fridge is bacon, and it’s not even thick-cut, so... i’ll have to show you another time.”

she laughed. “ _good_ answer. accurate pronunciation on _guanciale_ , even.” he didn’t even take it as an insult that she seemed so surprised - when she said the word, he could hear the italics on it, like a fancy cookbook. lachlan’s pronunciation was fine but he sure as shit didn’t sound like that. “whatever you feel like making. i trust you. no olives or water chestnuts; if it’s spicy, make it hotter than you think i can eat.”

he made tamarind chicken, edamame, a peanut noodle salad. mcblase complimented his lacquered chopsticks and used them with precision. on the floor, beans shoved her small face into a can of tuna with gusto, making little wet smacking sounds. lachlan ate as he usually did - standing up, leaning against the counter, cleaning anything he hadn’t gotten to as he cooked. mcblase didn’t tell him to sit down with her. he appreciated that.

since then, they haven’t been _friends_ \- mcblase keeps everyone at too far a reach for that - but definitely friendly, more so than she seems to be with most of the team. when they see each other at the coffee shop, she’ll actually drop back in line to chat with him. once in awhile they go out to a movie together (both of them have the same taste in documentaries). at the beginning of each season, when mcblase goes around getting everyone’s contracts finalized, she’ll stop by lachlan’s place to get his signature and stay for dinner. they talk about cities they’ve visited, restaurants in town that have closed or opened, how surreal their young selves would find it to see them sitting here. as if their past selves could even comprehend the nature of their days now.

lachlan doesn’t ask her about how she wound up here. she has the courtesy not to ask him, either. they allow each other the space to make references that they cannot understand the context of: lachlan says, _before my dad got sick_ , mcblase says _my_ _first time in law school_. beans walks in little infinity signs around their ankles, purring loud and insistent. she rubs her soft cheek against lachlan’s hand.

when mcblase’s frilled ears and gills first showed up, almost overnight, he figured she’d keep changing - the way workman and jesús had, skin colorshifting and growing textured in places. but it’s been seasons since then, and her skin stays firmly withinin the warm tones he associates with humans. if she didn’t wear her black hair slicked so sharply back, he wouldn’t even have noticed the gills running down her fine-boned neck.

he doesn’t bring them up. the whole thing halifax does to people freaks him the fuck out, if he’s being honest. he’s still not positive it won’t happen to him someday, but for the most part, he’s learned to let that notion rest in an unopened box in the back of his head.

one day, after they have watched a film about oliver sacks together in a mostly-empty theater, they emerge squinting into the sun. instead of heading straight for her car as usual, mcblase says, “hungry?”lachlan actually is - he nods. “there’s a korean place we can walk to. they’ve got my favorite fried chicken in the city.”

lachlan is pretty sure he knows which one she means, but lets her think it’s new to him. “sounds good to me.”

the wind is cold, slicing through their jackets as they walk. beans occasionally meows from inside mcblase’s neat leather tote; birds trill from the empty tree branches. lachlan’s new boots are still breaking themselves in, so he walks more slowly than usual, pushing each foot through its full range of motion deliberately. mcblase doesn’t seem to mind their slow pace. they have to take a circuitous route - at this point, downtown is redesigning itself for the semi- or totally-aquatic. the footpaths and bridges, many haphazardly added at the last second for the land-bound, resemble a pile of spaghetti. 

they pass over a submerged park. its neglected swingsets and slides trail veils of algae. a gazebo roof is thick with barnacles; not far off, lachlan can see what was once a cemetery, now a hazy miniature forest in the blue distance. black wrought-iron fences run like strange train tracks below them. lachlan enjoys the silence between him and mcblase - the space it leaves for him to really consider the things he looks at. even after all this time, he cannot believe the half-submerged world that has replaced his memories.

mcblase points towards a tiny building on stilts next to the floating sidewalk ahead. it’s one of the few in the area that bothered to move fully above the waterline. “that’s our destination.” lachlan nods; it’s definitely the one he remembers, but it’s been a long time. she says, “they lifted the building up like that because fried chicken has to be crispy to be any good. don’t you agree?”

he nods again, more full-heartedly. “hell, you know i’m not a fan of the soggy food thing in general, but fried chicken...”

she shudders delicately. “i will _never_ comprehend the twisted mind that produced the sog dog.”

“you sure?” lachlan can’t resist a little smirk. “not gonna sprout extra eyes on stalks and start eating wet bread?”

she lowers her sunglasses and points her two real, dark, neatly lined eyes at his. “don’t even _joke_ , shelton.” if it weren’t for the way she speeds up a bit and stops talking, her red-soled heels clicking on the sidewalk just ahead, he would have no idea she’s actually disturbed by the notion.

when they reach the restaurant - which is really a take-out window and a couple tables crammed inside before the kitchen - they order chicken, kimchi, mandoo, drinks. they find a bench and spread out their feast between them; mcblase extracts a crisp, neatly folded handkerchief from somewhere in her purse and spreads it across her lap. beans pokes her head out of the bag, meowing for a bite of dinner. lachlan knows mcblase doesn’t approve, but when her back is turned he palms a bit of chicken meat and lets it drop to the sidewalk.

after they’ve finished, they drink together; lachlan takes a shot of soju, then sips from a tall can of cold beer. mcblase takes occasional draws off her bottle of soju, neat. once while they were drinking together, she’d asked if lachlan minded her smoking a cigar. he said he did, actually, but the detail has clung to him like heavy smoke anyway.

she looks like she could go for some kind of smoke now, but instead she lifts one hand to her neat hair, tucking it behind one frilled ear. “you know,” she begins, then halts.

lachlan waits patiently. the sidewalk bobs ever so gently beneath them. he looks out at the water, stretching to the horizon, as a way to give her some privacy he imagines that she needs at this moment. when mcblase clears her throat and he looks back to her, it takes a moment for him to realize what’s missing.

“your ear - “

the seashell curve at the top of her normal, human ear is swollen and red. she unfurls her hand to show a crumpled blue-green flower: the false ear she has just removed. lachlan blinks.

“the gills?”

mcblase grins. “i’m very good at makeup.” he laughs and licks his thumb as if to smudge it off; she sighs in a way that transmits her eye-roll, even with the sunglasses on. “please,” she says, not sounding offended in the slightest. “you think i didn’t figure out waterproof makeup my first week here?”

he nods in a little mock-bow, acknowledging her skills in deception. “so... how come?”

she takes a long pull of her drink. in her other hand, she worries the false ear between fingertips and thumb. finally she shrugs. “it’s a lot easier to blend in sometimes.”

lachlan remembers _before all of this_. he remembers the him who did blend in, effortlessly, living a small simple human life on an island at an edge of the world. back then, he would’ve been surprised if a woman like mcblase - sharp-heeled shoes, expensive sunglasses - had sat down to eat with him at all. today, she’s officially the most normal of his usual companions, even with the cat wrapping its half-dozen paws around her ankle.

“normalcy is hard to come by around here,” he says.

she nods. the sidewalk continues its gentle, surreal movement. sitting together - two humans, drinking together, looking at sky and water - they are inside a moment as old and familiar as history. now, lachlan thinks, they are friends.

—

if you asked him, cedric would say that actually he’s got pretty good self-esteem, these days. he’s an okay blaseball player, a pretty decent friend. not the worst boyfriend anyone’s had. the kids on the team think he’s cool, for some reason. he’s mostly stopped covering up half his goddamn face all the time and he hasn’t had a panic attack in a grocery store over wasting his entire life in, like, two months now.

humans are not very reliable narrators; cedric’s self-esteem is not “pretty good”. for now we can allow him to tell himself that it is, though.

the red bandanna he used to wear daily is knotted around one blade of the fan over his bed now. he looks at it each morning. some, he touches its familiar fabric and considers it seriously. once in awhile, he just doesn’t have the psychic energy to show the world his entire face, and pulls it from the fan blade to tie around his head.

he is grateful for the way that alston, when present, lets this pass without remark. they have - without speaking of it - learned to step around certain things for each other. these aren’t elephants in the room. more like skeletons that neither has bothered to keep in closets. they aren’t ignoring, just - respecting the ghosts.

but it’s one room of a house in an entire world. they can spend days without needing to watch where they walk; most mornings, cedric pulls his hair back and heads into the sunlight with a visible grin. most days, it doesn’t matter where alston came from or if he’s going to take off on this place too someday. what matters is the current moment - the _now_ they stand inside with each other, hands clasped, not thinking of anywhere as far away as tomorrow.

cedric has not been so happy in so long. trying to like himself more than he already does just seems like wishing for more wishes. some people in this world think that’s their right; cedric has always figured three is more than enough. 

once in awhile, though, he will say or do something and he will sense that alston wants very much to acknowledge the skeleton before him with a slap to the skull. like back when he got really into javanese gamelan music and tried to put together his own ensemble piece, track by track, and alston showed up unexpectedly one night as he was fucking around with a gambang he’d managed to have shipped to him at a not-totally-insane cost. after a couple hours focused on the nuances of the cascading chimes, trying to play a bit faster each time around, the knocks on the door made him jump and smack his mallets against the wooden bars, making a sound like a tinkly music-box car crash. he shoved the instrument under his bed and kicked a pile of dirty clothes in front of it.

when he opened the door, alston kissed him and said, “what was that noise?”

cedric shrugged. “watching some shit on youtube.” alston had tilted his head very slightly, as if waiting for cedric to say something else; cedric had turned around instead, waving one hand to motion alston inside, knowing as he did so that an opportunity had been missed. he pretended not to notice the small sigh from behind him. 

or there was the time he’d taught himself to make turkish delight for lachlan’s birthday. he’d wrapped it up in a gold cardboard box tied with a stiff satin bow and left it with a simple card, hoping that would be the end of it. when lachlan raved about it to the entire team, insisting they all try a delicate rose-pink cube, and demanded to know where cedric had gotten it, he said, “my cousin loves baking.” it wasn’t _technically_ a lie.

when alston found the bottle of rosewater in his pantry a couple weeks later while searching for a midnight snack, he did actually say, “hey, isn’t this - “

it was midnight, though, and he was fairly drunk. cedric leaned into the pantry behind him and said, “oh, shit, i have funfetti frosting in here?” alston didn’t remember the rosewater a minute later, let alone the next day.

so but the point is, cedric knows he has a ways to go, self-esteem-wise. still, he thinks he’s not doing so bad. it isn’t until alston asks about the bracelet that he learns otherwise.

they’re lying on the sagging couch in cedric’s living room when it happens, half-watching some terrible home renovation show. alston is tucked against cedric’s chest; he fits neatly between cedric’s splayed legs, their toes almost touching at the other end of the couch. cedric loves the compactness of alston’s frame. the sheer amount of _person_ he manages to pack into his wiry body. he is thinking about this, running his fingertips over the dense muscle of alston’s forearm, when alston touches the bracelet with his opposite hand.

“where’s this from, anyway?”

cedric has worn the soft braided leather and small wooden beads wrapped around his wrist for years, now. when he first made it he was deep into a vajrayana buddhist phase. carving the small, lotus-shaped beads from acacia wood was a form of meditation that suited him better than any other. once the bracelet was finished he tried to use it as a point of focus, a touchstone, to access that same state of mind. it didn’t work.

then one of his friends got really into online poker, so cedric started picking it up to help him play practice hands while they smoked together, and then _he_ got really into texas hold ‘em, and the bracelet became just a thing he wore because he liked it.

he looks at it. he has the sense of seeing it now for the first time since the day he completed it.

alston has waited for an answer long enough. “don’t make something up. okay?” his hand wraps around cedric’s arm, a copper cuff, another bracelet. “please?”

cedric grimaces, and is immediately glad that alston can’t see his face. he’s stuck with the full truth: “i made it.”

“was that so hard to say?” cedric wants to be annoyed by the question, but alston’s voice is genuinely curious. he’s never had the problem of claiming too little for himself.

cedric begins to brush his fingers back and forth, very slowly, across alston’s knuckles again. “it just doesn’t... matter. it’s a thing i did once, you know? i didn’t do it to get any kind of credit.”

alston exhales through his teeth. “of course not. but it matters to _me,_ you idiot _._ ”

there is a long silence. in the background, a woman on TV is crying about her new open-concept kitchen. one of cedric’s feet is starting to tingle a little bit. he doesn’t move. he says, “i carved the beads myself.”

“of course you did!” the intensity of alston’s delighted laughter is a surprise - one that makes cedric’s stomach flip slightly. “did you tan the leather yourself, too? raise the cow from a baby?”

cedric flushes, but laughs too. “aw, c’mon - “

“really though.” alston taps one bead gently with his index finger. “i won’t make a big deal about it, if you’d prefer that. please just... tell me about the things you’ve done, all right? let me appreciate how amazing you are.”

a rush of fierce, hot tears forces cedric to close his eyes; he buries his face in alston’s shoulder. it strikes him squarely how absurd it is that he can’t admit to anything he’s ever been remotely proud of.

they sit like that for awhile. he regains control of his breathing. he says, “i’ll try.”

alston squeezes his wrist.

cedric pulls his hand away; before alston can get the wrong idea, he begins to undo the bracelet’s knots with his other hand. alston says, “oh, no, hold on - “

“no, no!” cedric has finished the knots and begins unraveling the leather from his wrist. the years have frozen it into a coil shaped exactly to him; when he begins to wrap it around alston, the slight extra space lets it fall down onto the widest part of his hand, instead of staying taut against the wrist. “listen. it’s a thing i made, okay? and it’s good, and you like it, so - it’s yours now.”

“are you sure?”

“yeah. that’s the deal. you can know if i made something, and you can even make a big fuckin’ stink out of it if you want, but - only if it’s something i’m giving you. okay?”

alston tilts his wrist back and forth, like a debutante admiring a new tennis bracelet. “thank you,” he says very softly. “yes. okay.” cedric has seen the man buy - and lose - a diamond-rimmed breguet watch without a fraction of this emotion.

his own wrist feels suddenly naked. he is astounded by both the size of his own shame, and the way alston’s reverence melts it away. cedric has never felt so loved in his entire life.

—

mooney brushes her hair.

she understands that these routines are important. that is what she has been told about grief. she rises, bathes, dresses. she brushes her hair. alone in her great mirror that reflects the great emptiness behind her. where her wife should be, and is not. she would never have said that she took her wife for granted - and yet now -

the hair is coming out steadily these days. at first it was just strands, floating off her lab coat or twisting themselves around the clip of her pen. then it was little knots catching on the plastic brush bristles and coming free entirely. now she pulls tumbleweed clumps out of the brush daily; contrary to logic, the healthiest and thickest strands, with the most vibrant blue tips, have all gone first. her already-fine hair has become pale and lank, even when just-washed.

she sets the brush down before her and touches one earlobe. she does not bother to put jewelry on most days. that was something different than routine, something ritual. something sacred. the procedure of picking through her carved wooden jewelry box, with its dusty plush and little brass handles. to anyone else the pearls are virtually interchangeable; to mooney, who has been gifted the collection in a slow accretion over years, they are as distinct as the days they came with. anniversaries, birthdays, apologies after fights: all laid out in neat paired rows. (her wife, who selected each set of earrings with care, loves pearls with the same slight narcissism that drew the two to each other; she can tell the gems apart in the most minute gradations of shade and size.)

too many days have gone by. at least one piercing hole has begun to close. she has navigated so many stages of this... _process_ , this hideous path she is on, with relative grace. she has been told this, by the people who say things about grief and routine.

but this moment - frozen before her aging self in the mirror, hair limp and translucent, skinny and grimacing - she is incapable of bearing gracefully. she is torn between the poles of _put the earrings in_ and _let the holes close up_. the magnetic field between the two increases its intensity; she hangs immobile, agonizing for an unmeasureable length of time. 

instead of making a choice, she lifts her hands to her scalp and gently pulls.

the hair rips out in soft clumps, like grass in loose soil. when no more will come easily, she begins to twist her fingers through what remains and tugs more fiercely, until the pain is too persistent to continue. then she goes to the shower and gets her razor from its little hook on the wall. she shaves away the rest by feel alone. her skull is palpable just below the skin; she traces its bumps with the blades as carefully as she can.

in the mirror, her head is luminous, reflecting all the light around her. a sharp pain laces through her sternum. she is only a miniature reflection, like the ones she used to see in all the water of halifax, reminding her how beloved she was.

still, she is happier to see this iteration of herself than the last. she never forgets her grief. not one second of one day since her wife -

no one around her will forget now, either. this brings her a sense of serenity. 

she whispers to her wife (wherever such a message may be directed, in this universe or another): _i know you’d hate it, darling, but it’s just until you come home._

— 

when jesús first got scorpler’s/his jacket, the inside of it felt like the only safe place left in the world. all season he’d been wishing as hard as he could to become invisible; he tried his best, shrinking back down inside the layers of sweaters and shirts he already wore, hunching and staring at the ground. he got even shyer than he had been when he first arrived, and no one could stop comparing him to the “original”. he gave his teammates tight little close-lipped smiles when he did look up at them. putting on scorpler’s jacket made him feel safe enough to finally lift his head and look for awhile at the wreckage of the team around him.

it was hard to face anyone directly for too long. everyone’s eyes were so easy to read: their desperate attempts to stay strong for each other, their fear of the future’s inevitable pain and its unknown shape, their frustration with him (for retreating back into being nobody, for being safe when none of them were). even greer’s eyes, when a rare flash of light caught them, were less darkly opaque than usual.

that was why he started talking to CV in the first place - he was the only one jesús could actually look at, and CV took it as friendliness. (it helped that some of the faces he drew for himself were hilarious - or genuinely adorable - although jesús isn’t sure he’d use that exact phrasing directly to CV.) by the time things calmed down somewhat, he’d realized that he actually liked the guy a lot. CV is... weirdly centered, beneath the manic camera-always-on energy. he knows exactly what he’s about; nothing shakes his certainty that he’s doing great, or that the people around him will too. (this applies even in the face of strong evidence to the contrary - for example, his faith that he’s about to become a twitch superstar, despite his follower count in the 70s.) 

of course, it helps that CV seems to live one of those charmed lives propped up to some extent by others. jesús himself ended up breaking the fall when CV lost track of his bills and needed to find a roommate - it worked out in the long run, but for awhile jesús was starting to feel like they were the odd couple, except not in a cute gay retro way.

having york around makes things easier. york goes along with CV’s dumb ideas most of the time, but he likes being part of the prank videos and saves jesús from having to be on stream. he doesn’t mind helping jesús clean the apartment as long as he gets to pick the music, which is fortunate, because CV is okay with buddy leaving a fine dust of dorito crumbs everywhere, and jesús is _not_.

but so the point is: things are a lot better now. the three of them balance out well; the apartment is clean-ish. people stick around long enough that jesús can learn to like them and get sick of them and then like them again. he learns to get comfortable saying _my best friends._

that doesn’t mean everything is okay. he still wears the jacket. it means different things now - he’s added his own patches and pins, sewed his favorite gifts to the inside so he can carry them near his heart - but it’s still _safety_. still his favorite and only security blanket. he still needs things, still clings to what he can.

on crisp cold nights like this, roaming the streets with the other two, they’re all bundled up the same. york tends to overdo it since he’s still settling in from the tropics. CV is the opposite, the guy who’s liable to wear cargo shorts and sandals in a snowstorm, but he’s dressed for the weather today for the sake of crew unity. 

it’s one of those lightly magical teenage nights full of infinite bullshit. they pass a whole foods and steal ears of corn from a display outside. york distributes them to residential mailboxes as they walk. his favorite are the drop slots - archaic to a kid his age, jesús thinks. (because he knows how to work a rotary phone, jesús thinks he has a worldly knowledge of the antiquated, but he’s not _that_ much older than york.)

CV snags a crabapple off a tree and uses it as a makeshift hacky-sack. they call out the count, keep it going, defy gravity within their tiny roaming circle. 

york puts an ear of corn through a drop slot; a dog on the other side growls, and they take off running and giggling. they walk beneath power lines with a pair of sneakers slung over them. they walk beneath mostly-bare trees. they talk about: nothing, everything, video games, theology, inside jokes, high art, the lowest-of-brow innuendo, where they’ll go and where they’ve been. the night sprawls out around them, ready to be explored forever.

CV sees a half-rotted orange on the ground as they cross a bridge over the river; he kicks it in and they watch it float away. the stars’ reflections sparkle in the water.

jesús wishes his eyes were cameras. he would like to film all of this, on grainy reels of super 8. set it to post-rock or whatever. something instrumental and infinite.

they come to an elementary school. none of them went there, but in the broad possibility of the night, it seems to belong to them. they scramble around on the chunky plastic structures until they find strangely comfortable positions: york perched on the monkey bars; CV laying in an inverted arc on a paneled bridge with his head upside-down; jesús half-tucked into the narrow mouth of a slide, his feet keeping him from falling backward.

york says, “truth or dare?”

CV says, “dare.”

york says, “how many followers you got right now?” CV flashes his fingers to signal, _73_ , without checking. york snickers loudly. “post on your twitter that you’re gonna show your butt to 73 people in half an hour.”

CV smacks his hands together, brings them apart to display two flipped birds aimed in york’s direction. jesús laughs hard at the whole scene. york says through his giggles,

“don’t pick dare again!”

CV says to jesús, “truth or dare?”

jesús doesn’t have followers or a twitter account he uses. he says, “dare.” CV says, “find a way to get on the roof of the school.”

it’s easy - a quick shimmy up a drain pipe, fingertips latched onto the gutter, one good kick to get his weight up. the other two follow him without prompting. on the roof, jesús looks back at them and says, “york? truth or dare?”

york is always the bravest of them: “truth!”

without thinking, jesús says, “what are you most afraid of in the world?”

york’s answer is as quick, but not a fraction as careless. “i’m scared of not being in control of myself again.”

he scratches beneath his hat. jesús knows what he is picking away behind his left ear: the scaly dead skin the peanut left all over him. the idea that this is his fault makes jesús want to die.

york says, “CV?”

CV says “dare” because of course he does. he takes a picture of his butt, supposedly (nobody looks or is willing to verify the picture.) york grants him a final chance: “i won’t make you post it until the _next_ dare.”

on jesús‘s next turn, he says “truth”. it’s only fair.

CV says, “how come all the jackets?”

he doesn’t know how to answer. there _isn’t_ an answer. it’s like asking a centipede _how come all the legs?_ what kind of answer can possibly resolve that question?

york scratches behind his ear.

jesús has the sense of what it must have been like to be the first fish to crawl onto land. _why not?_ if there’s no reason how come, then what does it matter? he thinks of what it would be like, to be someone as young and brave and beautiful as york, even after having to kick away his own shell coffin. he pulls off scorpler’s (his) jacket.

CV nods as if this is an answer.

york says, “dare.” jesús says he should eat a whole box of twinkies. there is a long detour back to the town center, and the late-night drugstore, and the aisle where they must discuss if pumpkin spice twinkies have different math for “eating a box of horrific nonsense” than regular twinkies. there are long moments strolling around the store, making fun of the as-seen-on-TV items, smearing makeup testers on their wrists. jesús sinks into the terrifying delight of being without the jacket. it’s on the roof. it’s safe. it’s waiting for him. 

they go back to the playground. york asks a question. CV says, _truth_.

york says, _who do you love?_

jesús looks at the sky. 

love is enormous. everything is bigger than him. CV says, _buddy has loved me since before i knew i existed._ he says, _jesús_?

“truth.”

the same question, always, forever. _why all the layers?_

he takes another off. there are a dozen to go. it will be many nights before he’s ready to say why, or how. there are miles to go before anyone sleeps.

york’s smile across the night is a lighthouse. the sky is impossible to perceive in all its depth: all jesús can see is the stars, close up, shining so bright they erase the sky’s emptiness. he feels the air, six inches closer to his skin, and smiles back as high-beam bright as he can.

—

it’s strange to be free when your friends aren’t. it doesn’t feel very much like freedom at all. every day of their freedom - just like so many days of their life in chains before death - workman gloom wakes up in halifax at the same time. they put on the same cap and clip the same lead to beasley’s collar, with the same grumbled conversation as always (“i know, i _know_ , it’s not _my_ fault you can’t control yourself around squirrels - “)

the difference is that workman gets to drop beasley off at the stadium in the morning and take off if they want. they don’t have to stick around. no more practice, no more games. they’re always welcome, of course, and they do hang out plenty of days, but freedom means they never _have_ to spend another second in a blaseball stadium again.

workman can’t imagine a single universe in which they never do.

it isn’t that they love the game. (although they still do, in some deep secret portion of their soul - still believe that the arc of their postmortem run was sacred geometry, that there has never been anything more beautiful than the kiss of bat and ball.) they just... don’t have anyone else. where could they go that they would never think of the game again? even if it weren’t for beasley - even if their heart weren’t bound to his fate - who else could they ever hold a single honest conversation with in the world?

so workman stays in halifax. they take beasley for walks. they spend time helping kiki make posters; they go for long bike rides through the woods with lachlan. they travel with the team to away games in charleston.

time has changed some things. sometimes they stay in charleston for a couple days after the team moves on, spend some time helping vela with her garden, stay at cornelius and dickson’s place on their comfortingly worn leather sofa.

they’ve moved in with polkadot patterson, who beasley has grown deeply attached to. calling them - _her_ \- dot had always felt a little forward. like calling a teacher by their first name in school, or something. now that they share a fridge and responsibility for keeping beasley’s water dish full, it feels obvious. polkadot has always been the star pitcher, the distant honorary mascot of the team; someone like that barely has a home, let alone a roommate and half-custody of a sentient dog and a surprisingly messy bedroom. the person that workman lives with is named dot, and the rest is formality.

they’re talking about names one day when workman tries to explain this. the subject comes up as they’re lying on the grass in a little park in charleston; beasley and dot have just finished some pitching drills, with workman retrieving the balls for them. it’s a beautiful autumn day. the sky above is an unbroken bolt of blue silk, rolling out infinitely into the horizon.

the subject actually comes up in the first place because of tillman fucking henderson. on their walk to the park he’d driven past them, slowing down as he approached to yell, “HEY GLOOM!”

workman and beasley’s heads both snapped in response; tillman responded by cackling and yelling at _both_ of them, “WASN’T TALKING TO YOU, LOSER!” he flipped them off, stuck his tongue out, then swerved back into the street with a screech and no regard for the traffic around him.

dot seemed perturbed, but workman couldn’t help laughing a bit at the idiocy of it all. beasley shook his head once, rearranging his jowls, and continued his diligent sniffing of the sidewalk.

it comes to workman’s mind as they’re lying in the grass. they say, without preamble, “you know, when i first joined the team, that was the first time anyone had called me gloom in years.”

“oh?”

“yeah, because - “ workman gestures at beasley, who is panting quietly and snuffling as he settles down for a nap. “so it kinda messed with my head, actually. made me feel like it was some kind of... destined thing, for us to be separated and sad. especially with the cloud. i wondered, y’know, was this always gonna happen?”

“i’m sorry.” dot sounds uncertain about the words.

workman shakes their head a bit. “nah. you guys cut it out by yourselves, and now me and beasley are together again anyway. but isn’t it interesting how much names can matter like that?”

dot considers this for a long while; when she responds, the uncertainty is still there. “i suppose.”

“okay, so, for example - you’re polkadot patterson, right? that’s your name?”

“yes, that is my name.” she sounds vaguely amused.

“but no one on the team calls you that, that would be silly.” from the corner of their eye, workman can see dot nod. “and honestly, who even calls you polkadot anymore? i know a couple people used to, but...”

“when york silk arrived, he insisted on calling me mx patterson for some time.” dot’s voice is warm, fond - a tone workman is still getting used to from her.

“exactly! those names are all different people.” they scratch beasley’s flank absently with their fingernails. “i never called myself ‘gloom’, so when people started saying it, i either didn’t know they meant me, or... i thought, yeah. that’s me. the sad one.”

dot sounds neutral again when she says, “i never called myself anything.” workman makes an inquiring noise. “do you think that means something? that i never felt like i had a name?”

workman thinks it’s a pretty straightforward metaphor, but they don’t say that. “i think... sometimes it takes practice to feel like a person.”

there is another long silence; the sun continues its gentle sweep across the sky. dot sits up, resting her little chin in one suckered hand. she gazes across the field. a chickadee sings nearby. beasley makes little _whuff whuff_ noises as he sleeps. dot says, “i am not entirely a person.”

workman sits up, too, bracing themself against the dirt with one hand and frowning. “what’s that supposed to mean?”

she does not look away from the moss-draped trees at the end of the field when she says, “would you like me to show you?”

important moments don’t always make themselves known as they occur, but this one does. workman nods solemnly. dot stands but they do not - it feels right to stay sitting, one hand on beasley’s warm side. dot is so short that workman barely has to look up, anyway.

her little eyes are lined with wrinkles. she closes them and purses her lips very slightly beneath the beak of her nose. for a moment longer, she is just a small squiddish thing with the face and tiny frame of an old woman.

then some sheer curtain drops away, and workman _sees_ it.

hands splayed in haloes like a cave painting, forming an aura of waving fingertips like sea grass. the towering creature inside/behind/around the small avatar that workman sees every day. (they are looking up now - craning their head back to take in the enormity of what they are seeing, so far back that their neck aches.) a pulsing, clear blue light spills out from a dark wound in the world. the sunlit day around them fades; workman and beasley fade; dot fades. in the center of the pure blue rays of light stands the silhouette of something that does not use any of the names workman knows. perhaps it does not have a name at all.

the moment collapses like a folding fan snapped shut. normal sunshine rushes back in to fill the space. dot smiles so hesitantly that workman’s chest aches.

they say, “it’s a hell of a thing, blaseball.”

dot’s laugh is short and dry as a cough.

workman continues: “the big game was weird enough. but then, coming back for real... i wonder a lot, why me? am i still the same person that i was before? am i a person at all, or something different now? that kinda thing.” dot’s head inclining very slightly forward is the only indication she’s listening, though workman knows she is. “but...”

they gesture at the sky, the live oaks in their gauzy scarves of spanish moss, at dot herself, before beginning to scratch behind one of beasley’s ears. they don’t actually know what to say next.

even so, dot smiles again, more certain this time. she says, “a hell of a thing, indeed.”

she sits back down on the ground at beasley’s other side and rests her hand behind his other ear. she and workman sit there together scratching his head; the happy snorts he makes in his sleep are a deep, low song. they listen to it together.

—

they are together on the threadbare sofa in ziwa’s apartment. the movie is over. the lights are low. they look at each other, and both smile at the same time, then blush. ziwa is deeply aware of every square centimeter where their legs are touching. eugenia reaches one hand gently towards the side of ziwa’s head.

ziwa pulls back a fraction and says, “that isn’t safe.”

eugenia says “it’s fine.”

ziwa touches their head. underneath their hat, the roots of the little deadly tendrils that float from their skull itch and spasm. they dig their nails in through the canvas. the neurons cease for a moment.

“i never want to hurt you.”

eugenia’s laugh is like church bells. ziwa could shape their life around it. “you can’t. please! let me!”

she peels the hat away like she isn’t inspecting an archaeological site or the legacy of a war crime. she puts her gentle fingers into ziwa’s hair. she massages the scalp. 

nothing bad happens to anyone.

ziwa closes their eyes and relaxes, the tiniest bit, into believing that this can continue to be true.

**Author's Note:**

> infinite thanks to orb-corner for being an incredible lore machine - this piece, more than any other blaseball fic i’ve written, feels like a collective work. special thanks to: bryan, cynda, & pidge for beta-reading, and jonny of the thieves for lore help.


End file.
